Debates over identity have poisoned the world. Europe raises the repugnant specter of the Great Replacement, of ethnic replacement. The fault always lies with the immigrants, who cross half the world on foot to impose their customs on us and slaughter a lamb on the next balcony just when Fernando Alonso, on another Saturday, remains out of Q3. If I wanted to plot substitutions, rather than on immigrants I would focus on that new category of floating citizen called expatriate. Expatriate. That is, senior employees of multinationals have been moved to cities where life is better and cheaper.
THE expatriates They are impervious to context. Mentally they remain in their countries. Or anywhere. They eat muffinsthey drink smoothies, They queue at bars to order eggs blessed with avocado and others flat white for four euros. They destroy the social and real estate fabric of the city (they pay what is necessary for what is necessary because, fundamentally, they don’t pay). And they will never learn the local language, because they are passing through. Without this, its existential temporariness necessarily implies a temporal question. The bad thing expatriatebut the best thing is that he usually knows nothing of what is happening around him. And this, to a large extent, was very useful to Hansi Flick last year to isolate himself from the pot of crickets he ended up in.
The German, however, decided to integrate, to be one more. Have an aperitif at Turó Park, stroll through the Galvany market among the bourgeoisie of via Santaló in search of a good turbot or eat in the sun on the Bocconi terrace in Sarrià while your personal He trains in a chain of gyms in the neighborhood. Hansi Flick also no longer controls his impulses, he lets a couple out sausages to the referee if necessary, apologizes when he loses, criticizes the referees and proclaims that he will give everything for a club and a city he loves, a completely incidental demonstration of Mediterranean passion for a German who has signed a professional contract with the body that pays him.
Flick’s stubborn side has now emerged without complexes, and he too has decided that he will not take a step back. Something very Spanish and, in recent years, also Catalan. Not a single step! Obviously. But it would be better for his defense to take a few steps back. Or meters. At least until he solves the problem that arose at 30,000 feet above sea level when Iñigo Martínez told him this summer that he was leaving on the flight home from Japan and wished him good luck. Barça have conceded 20 goals in 15 competitive matches this season, an average of 1.3 per game, the second worst of the century.
Flick doesn’t speak the local language, neither Spanish nor Catalan, it’s true. As it remains faithful to the spirit expatriate How well isolating yourself worked last year. But the famous culé environment, the pressure and the spotlight focus on the German. Beyond the disaster against Bruges, which resembled Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan, the image of Lamine Yamal, an 18-year-old star, asking for solutions from the bench is the clearest symptom that the coach will no longer be able to live in Barcelona and in the club as if things were not his. They highlight the results, the play and the star of their team in the middle of the match. Now he will know what it means to coach Barça. Welcome home.
